The playful skeleton figures associated with Day of the Dead are called calacas.
Calaca is a colloquial Mexican Spanish word for a skeleton. In Día de los Muertos imagery, calacas are often shown smiling, dancing, wearing festive clothes, or playing musical instruments. Their cheerful appearance reflects a cultural approach that treats death as part of life rather than only as a source of fear or mourning.
Calacas can appear as masks, wood or clay figures, decorations, illustrations, and candy or sugar figures. They are especially common on altars, in parades, and in seasonal folk art. José Guadalupe Posada’s satirical skeleton prints helped shape modern Mexican skeleton imagery, although the calaca is not identical to his famous figure La Calavera Catrina.
The terms can overlap in casual English, but calavera literally means “skull” and can refer to skull-shaped foods, poems, or artwork. Catrina specifically names the elegant female skeleton popularized by Posada and later Diego Rivera. Calacas is the broadest fit for the playful skeleton figures in this question.